Too much time and money…

Foreign Policy has this article about American and British tourists going to…Iraq.

You’ve got to be freakin’ kidding me.

I’m all for physically and mentally challenging yourself on vacation.  I certainly don’t find anything appealing about laying about on a beach like a lump waiting for some underpaid lackey to feed and position me like some well fed veal calf.

This, however, is ridiculous.  If you’re 79 years old and seriously have to consider getting ‘hostile environment training‘ before going on vacation, you really should reevaluate your life choices.

I suspect this is a symptom of the ‘Disneyfication’ of our society.  People just can’t seem to wrap their pretty little heads around the fact that the world is dangerous.  Case in point:

And none of the group seemed very concerned about security.

“It never occurred to me to think it was a risk,” said the 77-year-old archaeologist from north London, Bridget Jones.  “I’m an optimist. I think it’ll never happen to me.”

She admitted she had heard “a couple of explosions”, and then she told me that she would prefer to be killed by a car bomb than die in a hospital geriatric ward.

Former probation officer Jo Gilbert, from the US, agreed there was a danger of being kidnapped and murdered.

But, with a nervous laugh, she said she was prepared to take that risk.

I wonder if they’d be so flippant if they were kidnapped, bombed, shot at.  And wait, let me guess…who would be responsible for rescuing them if they were in danger?

What a bunch of maroons…

Kill ‘em all!

The Armchair Generalist has an interesting post commenting on a rant by Eeben Barlow telling his readers that we need to stop pussy footing around when it comes to illegal drugs and kick some ass.

Fighting the illegal drug trade requires a strong strategy – a strategy that governments will not be afraid to implement, regardless of the human rights of the dealers, syndicates and cartels. It, additionally, requires a genuine desire to eradicate the problem. If the drug wars are to be won, it requires determination from governments to do exactly that. This requires courage and national will – character traits few governments seem to have.  It is time for governments to either take the politically correct avenue and legalise drugs or do the correct thing and fight it in order to stop it. If the decision is made to destroy this trade, then strong action is called for. This action should call for an intensification of real intelligence gathering and hard action to attack and destroy the dealers, syndicates and cartels.

I find it hard to believe that Barlow is such an idealist that he thinks things like the law of supply and demand and corrupt government officals can be overcome if we just all had the will.

If just implementing a strategy that didn’t worry about silly things like human rights was all it took to stop the drug traffickers than these places would be drug free.

If we’re going to wish for honest governments willing to forgo national and personal interest for the greater good of the world, drugs might not be a problem.  Either would war, environmental damage or greed.

You might as well put a pony on your list while you’re at it.